Democrat-Gazette Beefs Up for Zoned Edition

by Talk Business & Politics ([email protected]) 101 views 

The statewide Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has hired a business editor, two feature writers and a photographer in recent weeks as the newspaper prepares to launch a zoned section for Northwest Arkansas.

We hear that, on July 12, readers in this corner of the state will begin receiving a “Northwest Arkansas section” in their D-Gs instead of the “Arkansas section,” which is currently distributed with the newspaper statewide.

Some media observers joke that the D-G is trying to win the Northwest Arkansas newspaper war simply by hiring all the reporters from the area’s daily newspapers. The D-G has raided heavily from the newsrooms of the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas and the Northwest Arkansas Times.

The D-G announced on June 7 that Tony Cox, a 1985 graduate of the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kan., has been hired as editor of Northwest Arkansas Business Matters, the D-G’s zoned business section. Cox replaces Susan Scantlin, who has been promoted to editor of the Northwest Arkansas bureau.

Business Matters lists 11 writers, editors and photographers in its masthead. We know of at least six other news reporters, excluding sports writers, who work out of the Springdale office for the daily D-G.